Missing New York college student Kenny DeLand Jr. located in Spain
Missing upstate New York college student Kenny DeLand Jr. turned up alive on Friday — calling his parents from Spain after seeing news reports about their international hunt for him.
“We are so happy to announce that Kenny is safe,” his family wrote in an update to a website dedicated to finding the 22-year-old Rochester student who went missing late last month while studying in France.
“We received a call from Kenny in the early morning hours” Friday, they wrote, saying it was a direct result of their frantic public appeals.
“Without the media’s help, Kenny would not have seen himself in the news and reached out to us,” they wrote.
The update said that Kenny is currently somewhere in Spain, without elaborating on how the keen hiker got there nor what he had been doing for the two weeks he was missing.
His mom, Carol, was already in France — where he went missing — and was “preparing to see Kenny and hopefully bring him home for Christmas.”
While the update did not identify where the missing student saw himself, his call appeared to come through while his dad was in the middle of an interview with CNN.
The dad, Ken DeLand Sr., hung up — but soon messaged back to share the “good news,” CNN first reported early Friday.
“He is alive — that’s all I can say,” the relieved dad said.
French prosecutor Eric Vaillant initially told CNN he had no idea that the student had been found alive. However, he later confirmed the news that he’d turned up in Spain, without revealing exactly where or why.
Vaillant told Agence France-Presse that “no problem” had been reported with DeLand’s health.
The senior at St. John Fisher University in Rochester had been attending the University of Grenoble Alpes and had last contacted his family on Nov. 27 on WhatsApp.
His fellow students reported him missing on Nov. 29, with the French Interior Ministry reportedly describing him as being in a “fragile mood” and possibly “depressed.”
The disparition inquiétante — or serious missing persons — report also noted that the student “does not speak French well.”
On his most recent message posted on TikTok, DeLand filmed himself making a Christmas list that included “more friends” and “no depression.”
His dad earlier told CNN that his son would regularly go hiking, but doing so without getting in touch for so long “creates all the worry that any parent could ever feel.”
